Premier.

Just like the title claims, I’m sure this little post will not end anywhere near its beginning. I’ve recently climbed the corporate ladder right out of the company, and moved on to a stint in the fourth grade. Well the fourth through sixth grades. At a small private school at which I was a student for the majority of my schooling.

When approached about the job, my head refused but my mouth refused to. Thinking about returning to a place that I had mocked, avoided and from which I celebrated my release originally caused me terrors. My mouth served me better than my head as I told the administrator who approached me that I’d love to take the job.

As one of my favorite British comedians once said “People who work in retail are either complete idiots or liars”. My supervisor had another opinion of course. She claimed that we all could choose what kind of day we would have. Her exact theory was that we had complete control over how we felt about daily events. We could be “Tiggers”, constantly perky, vomiting sunshine, refusing to be insulted, belittled or discouraged. Those of us incapable or Tigger-dom were doomed to be gloomy “Eeyores” all of our lives, with no happiness. Since she ascribes to this Hundred Acre world I’ll play along. I am Christopher Robin. TV Tropes will coin me the “Only Sane (Wo)Man”, and I shall wear it with pride. I can join this world and enjoy it for a while. I can sit and marvel at its wonders with the natives. I can also experience with them their trials, some petty, some monumental. At the end of the day, however, I can leave that world, and I do. I spent the majority of four years in the retail Hundred Acre Woods, trying to find my place and worrying and feeling less than worthy when I failed.

But I can leave. Oh, how I fled whenever the chance arose. I am grateful for the years that I had there. I learned important things about myself, humanity, the world, sales and marketing, and how to BS my way through the day (I once survived a day by role-playing as pre-princess Kate Middleton).

So with much joy and flinging off of shackles, I leave retail in the dust (for now) to embark on an entirely different kind of challenge : educating the future. Day 1, tomorrow.